This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Over the next several days, I will be talking about what's sometimes called Dogen's Three Minds. These descriptions of dimensions or quality of mind or mind and heart that he describes in the Tenzo Kyokun. I did ask myself this morning, Why are you talking about this?

[01:00]

Because we are studying the Xin Xin Ming. What I am doing this because I feel like these three minds, these qualities, are a description of what the mind of great faith looks like in action, in engagement. in how we meet each moment, how we meet our life. Sometimes we have the idea, kind of like the island where it all works out. We have an idea that somehow we are going to get the mind of great faith. or we're going to get, whatever it is, we're going to get enlightenment or waking up.

[02:06]

And especially for those who are doing a kind of intensive stilling, sitting, there are all kinds of potentially interesting experiences that can come with deep meditative practice. But ultimately, awakening, just like the mind of great faith, it's not an experience. It is a shift in perspective that allows us to meet our life in a new way, in a fresh way. And so these three minds are pointers. They're descriptors of what this mind of great faith looks like, feels like, smells like.

[03:13]

I also appreciate that this particular set of instructions from Dogen is one of the few in which he's offering instruction for engaged practice. So the role of the head cook in the monastery is a role of someone who is not just sitting still, but who is chopping and cutting and cleaning and composting and cooking. And so these instructions are particularly for how it is that every grain of rice, every leaf of salad can be met with these qualities of mind. So for those who are not sitting long hours of zazen and doing kinhin and being in silence,

[04:29]

These instructions are for you as well. So the three minds, they are Daishin, Roshin, and Kishin. I often hear them laid out in the opposite. Kishin, Roshin, Daishin. But for the purposes of this that we have together, I thought it would be most skillful, useful to start with Daishin. Daishin is sometimes simply described as big mind or great mind. And I mean here always heart mind. Sometimes it's described as magnanimous mind.

[05:33]

So it's important. And this goes back to the spirit of everything we've been studying in the Xin Xin Ming. This is not big compared to small. This is great. Like the great wisdom beyond wisdom heart sutra. This great is beyond big and small. It includes big and small, but isn't limited to it. Dogen describes Daishin this way. He says, it's like a mountain. It's like a mountain, stable and impartial. So a mountain sits in the midst of all kinds of changing weather and activity. and so on.

[06:34]

So it gives you a feeling of this immovability. Magnanimous mind is like a mountain, stable and impartial. No preferences. It exemplifies the ocean, he says. It is tolerant and views everything From the broadest perspective. Remember we talked about these perspectives. So this magnanimous mind sees all the circles. It sees everything from the broadest perspective. Having a magnanimous mind means being without prejudice. And refusing to take sides. This is exactly what we've been studying, that the habitual mind that always prejudges, that always has prejudice, has bias, has preference, is constantly falling off to one side or another.

[07:52]

And it's really important that within the understanding of this mind, this big mind, this great mind, we don't have to get rid of of anything. We don't have to, as what we've been studying, right? We don't have to get rid of our preferences, our likes and dislikes. We just have to see them for what they are. The clouds and the sun and the weather that shine or rain on this mountain-like presence that the ocean receives equally. whatever it is. It's very common when we are doing intensive meditation, although it's true in regular life as well, that there's some idea that we're supposed to be getting rid of, getting rid of, say, our thinking.

[08:59]

I just remember the first time I sat one of these several days in a row, and I was quite sure that I was going to be quiet. And that's not exactly what happened. What happened was my mind in stereo, quadra stereo, maybe these days. And I was so disappointed. But if we're willing to sit with exactly what's here, There's a shift that can happen. I found this little story, a little clip, encounter between Suzuki Roshi and a student. And the student came to Suzuki Roshi and said, what should I do with all my thoughts in Zazen? This is like the student coming to Dongshan and saying, you know, how can I... Get away. How can I avoid or get rid of heat and cold preference?

[10:02]

And Suzuki Roshi said. What's wrong with thoughts? So in this practice, again, whether we're in a fairly tight container of the traditional sashim. or we are engaging in our daily lives with kind of turning up the heat of paying attention. This snake in a bamboo pole is that we discover what's here. The restriction gives us this capacity for something to be revealed. One of the things we may discover is, I thought that to be a good meditator, I wasn't supposed to have thoughts. We discover the views and opinions that are, implicit, that are baked in, that we so often don't even know we have, which just means we think they're true, for the most part. There's beautiful commentary from Uchiyama Roshi on the Tenzo Kyokan.

[11:20]

And he describes Daishin in sort of exactly the opposite way of trying to get rid of everything. He says that Daishin is when the self opens so widely that it goes everywhere. I don't know about you, but that's sort of the opposite of what I imagine is supposed to happen. So what if it's not that we're trying to change ourselves or get ourselves into some kind of shape or have a particular kind of experience, but rather that we have this attitude of allowing so wide, so steady, so without preference or bias that we can allow ourselves to see everything as equal. He says, Uchiyama says, let the self widen until it fills the whole universe.

[12:34]

When that happens, there's truly no place to spit. And we can begin to have this experience of both the uniqueness of each and the of one, that it's all of one. There is a beautiful poem from Li Po. He says, we sit together, the mountain, the big mind mountain. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. We're not trying to get rid of anything. When we allow ourselves to be right where we are, we can open.

[13:41]

We can discover our mountain-like heart and mind. in the Theravada tradition, in which I've also practiced, there is an understanding of what we're describing here as this big mind, Daishin, great mind, as one of what are called the boundless qualities qualities of the heart, which you hear in Lippo's poem, which you hear in this invitation to allow ourselves to fill the whole world, to let our heart spread into each corner.

[14:47]

And these boundless qualities of heart, mind are loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. And equanimity is very close to what is being described here as daishin, as great mind. Equanimity is understood as the wise quality of the heart. Equanimity as this quality of steady mountain-like presence, of balance, of poise. of immovability. And it's so important that we not, I wrote it down in big letters for myself here, that equanimity is not indifference. Indifference has aversion in it. Equanimity is not that nothing matters.

[15:59]

Equanimity is that everything matters equally. What we like and what we don't like equally. Some years ago, I... a wonderful practice about these boundless qualities, which in one hand we are cultivating and on the other hand they are just being revealed. They're already here and as we sit we discover this wide, broad, stable mind and heart. And The practice I learned was from Bhikkhu Analyo, Venerable Analyo, and he describes each of these four qualities as a different.

[17:08]

The first three are these different phases of the sun. So loving kindness is the sun at high noon, equally spreading warmth, kindness everywhere. And compassion is the setting sun, that tender sun. beautiful color that comes as we let go, as the sun drops below the horizon. And joy, joy is that first morning sun. But equanimity, interestingly, has a different flavor. It's not an aspect of sun. It's described as moonlight. For me, this quality, this cool, shimmering, silvery light is very evocative of what's meant by Daishin.

[18:09]

We touch everything without trying to change it. Many of you may know that this image of the moon, the full moon, is an image of awakening, of enlightenment. It shows up in a lot of poems and so on. So I'm going to read a poem in which the moon shows up and... see how it lands for you this is again from one of the early buddhist nuns called punya which is full short poem she says fill yourself with dharma and when you are as full as the full moon burst open make the dark night shine

[19:28]

For me, the reading of this poem revealed a kind of cultural bias that I think is actually widely shared, but often not seen or felt or recognized. And the bias is that somehow we imagine that the light, the moonlight in the dark sky is bringing light, shedding light. And that assumption is that darkness is somehow bad, scary. This is everywhere in our language, the way we use dark in a negative sense. It's the way in which our language has taken up a culture that is anti-black. that is anti-dark, that has a bias toward light.

[20:45]

So we have language like going to the dark side or having dark thoughts or being in a dark mood. All of this has an implicit negativity. If... Like me, you take up the practice of noticing. I promise you will find it everywhere. This morning, I heard in the chanting chant that I love very much. The perfection of wisdom brings light. She illuminates the gloom and darkness of delusion. So even in our spiritual teaching, we have this language in which darkness is associated with gloom, with delusion, with confusion. This is also true in a cultural way, in terms of the culture on tilt, in terms of

[22:02]

what we might call masculine and feminine energies. And I don't in any way, I'm not referring to gender. I'm referring to more what we know from Chinese medicine as the energies of yin and yang, which are often yin, which is described as the feminine, is dark, damp, cold, passive. It's connected with feeling, with intuition, with mystery. And yang, we live in a very tilted yang culture, right? Our go, go, go culture in which there's a preferencing for light, activity, doing, functioning, warm, dry, intellect. This is about transcendence over a kind of embodied transformation. So for many of us, I think we sit in this

[23:06]

ancient karmic stew in which these energies are, these biases are allowing us, preventing us from seeing clearly. And what would it mean if we were as this great mind, the mind of great faith, This Daishin is suggesting if we were to see light and dark, yin and yang, as complementary, as equal. Some of you may know in Chinese medicine, it's understood that when yin and yang fall out of balance in the body, there's illness. But I think the same could be true. when we fall out of boundlands as a culture, as a world, we see exactly the kinds of difficulties that we see.

[24:13]

So what would it mean to reclaim darkness, not as a scary place, but as this, it was in the first talk or two that I offered this image of the person in the ocean, with the flap of the waves at the surface and this long body all the way to the bottom with this rich, dark stillness. Can we reclaim that darkness as the source, as this absolute mystery? And it may be scary, but it's only scary because it represents the unknown. And right at the center of that unknown is infinite possibility, infinite potential. We actually have language for this in Buddhist teaching.

[25:23]

Some of you may have heard the term that Tathagata Garba. This is the womb of awakening. that dark, fertile place out of which everything comes. So I'm going to read the poem again, the short poem, Punya, and invite you to see if you may hear it. Oops, a little bit differently. Without the overlay of this kind of culturally informed bias. Punya. Full. Fill yourself with the Dharma. When you are as full as the full moon.

[26:28]

Burst open. Make the dark. What is revealed is darkness. What is revealed is the utter mystery and beauty and ineffability of our life. This is what we are being invited to see. clearly as we sit, as we engage in our lives. The darkness

[27:34]

the equanimity, the stillness, the something that isn't moving at all, isn't over there or back there. It's right at the center. It's right at the center of every moment. Rumi, says it this way, the clear bead at the center. So that's another beautiful image for this Daishin, this great mind, heart. The clear bead at the center changes everything. There are no edges to my loving now. So this... Entry into darkness is an invitation to an equanimous love, an equal loving of all things, whether we like them or not.

[28:47]

And this, this is the mind of great faith. When we're willing to meet with open hands, with open hearts, each moment, just as it is, whether we like it or we don't. It's not easy and it's not difficult, but it is why we practice. And so wherever you may find yourself practicing on a cushion, whatever you're up to, what would it mean to bring this mountain-like heart and mind, this equanimous shimmering moonlight mind to meet your experience?

[29:55]

I will stop. with a poem. I'll close with a poem. The poem is called Sweet Darkness. This is from David White. When your eyes are tired, the world is tired also. What we see depends on where we look. What we see depends on the lens we're looking through. When your eyes are tired, the world is tired also. When your vision is gone, no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where night has eyes

[31:02]

To recognize its own. We could say that the self spreads out across everything. And we could say that everything is right here. That darkness is at the center of each moment. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure. you are not beyond love. Here, here, here, again and again, right where you are, here, you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon of further than you can see.

[32:04]

You must learn one thing. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes It takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds, the small worlds, the biased worlds, the worlds rife with prejudice, with hard edges.

[33:19]

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. You and me and all of us, we belong here. So as we move through these days together, you are wholeheartedly invited to fully take your seat, to fully be yourself. Sometimes it takes darkness, mystery, this great, beautiful unknown, and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anyone, Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. Anything or anyone that does not bring you fully alive is not great mind, is not what's being pointed to here.

[34:24]

So as we enter this stretch of days together. I hope that we can all remember this rich and beautiful dark. And to remember that when we allow ourselves to enter beyond what we already know. Past. the reaches of what the eye can see, what the mind can hold, that that's the place where we're not beyond love. That's the place where we can truly be free. So I know, especially for those of you who are sitting and walking long hours today, that sometimes the first day of a retreat can be bumpy at best.

[35:42]

And I hope that these words of encouragement will be that, will encourage you to find your seat, to be right where you are, wherever it is. And that together we can find our way to this great magnanimous heart and mind. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:38]

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